System Restore: On or Off?

[RobDMB]

I'm wondering what everyones thoughts on system restore are? Are there any advantages to turning this feature off? Does it effect performance? any thoughts are appreciated. -Rob

 

[xtknight]

Off - less disk space usage and you don't have to worry about disabling it when you get viruses.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Off as well....I just use an imaging program like TrueImage as my manual replacement for System Restore.

 

[MrChad]

On. HD space is dirt cheap nowadays, so there's no excuse there. It uses little system resources and it actually works quite well if you ever need it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

I leave it off.

 

[bdoople]

It's just another place for viruses to hide that you cannot touch unless disabled.

 

[cubby1223]

System restore has gotten better. I usually turn it off though, because in my opinion if the system is to a point where it needs to use it, you're probably much better off doing either a repair install, or a clean install.

The problem I saw a lot with it, was automatic recovery of system files after any kind of system error. I'd see computers with spyware and other crap in it, causing errors in explorer.exe, kicking in the automatic recovery routine, which more times than not put the machine in a worse situation. I don't know if that's a setting somewhere or not, or if M$ has changed it's behavior through the XP updates.

 

[Markbnj]

Off here. I turn it on and manually create a restore point before making system level changes. Once the change proves stable I turn it off again, which deletes the restore point.

 

[Seeruk]

Off - and have never needed it

However every single PC I build for someone I make sure its on .... makes support so much easier

 

[Navid]

It can be very helpful specially, for someone who is not very confident with computers.

I disable it as soon as I install XP. I use Drive Image and create images of my installation at different stages of the install. So, I can always restore to one of my images.

 

[timswim78]

Off for me. I ghosted my HD after doing a fresh install and installing my apps hardware and etc. Now, if there is a major problem, I can just restore the ghost image. Since all of my documents are stored on a separate drive, the only things that I have to manually restore are my bookmarks and email files (they are both stored on the OS partition).

 

[Churnd]

Off. Support wise, I never use it, and it usually winds up being more of a pain than a help.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: timswim78
Off for me. I ghosted my HD after doing a fresh install and installing my apps hardware and etc. Now, if there is a major problem, I can just restore the ghost image. Since all of my documents are stored on a separate drive, the only things that I have to manually restore are my bookmarks and email files (they are both stored on the OS partition).

I have my bookmarks and email files on another partition also. So, I have nothing to manually set after a restore.